Archive for June 28th, 2011

Summer is in full swing, and while I find myself spending more time out-of-doors and less time in front of my PC these days (turning that computer tan into a real one, heh!), I will always always always make time for an MMO live event.

Over the years, I’ve come to learn a thing or two about my gaming habits. For instance, when it comes to content, what makes me stick with a game isn’t so much the endgame. While I can’t deny a certain fondness for the raid rifts and experts, there’s no relying on those activities alone for reasons to maintain my sub. What I can’t resist, on the other hand, are little things like this — live events, the prospect of one-time-only occurrences, special enemies and unique rewards.

My new Blue Shell Crab pet! Clearly you can see where my priorities are.

To be honest, though, I didn’t think another one was going to roll around so soon, but I suppose this is Trion making good on their promise of many future events. They certainly don’t waste time.

Given the arguably disastrous outcome of the last world event, there’s also a part of me curious about how this one will go. It really was a shame how “River of Souls” ended, but I think it would be an even greater shame if players let the fallout from that cast its pall upon all future events. Fortunately, Trion strikes me as a company that reacts well to player feedback and learns from its mistakes, so it will be interesting to see if they can pick up the ball.

Phase 1: The Black Depths is currently well under way. And I suppose the aquatic theme means I’d better hurry up and get over the awkwardness of battling under water. Truth is, the underwater combat in this game has always made me feel like a Rock’Em Sock’Em robot suspended at the end of a claw crane machine fighting with a wet shirt over my face. I’d never felt very comfortable with it, even all the way back since the early stages of closed beta.

This being the first phase (out of a total of five!) I can’t say I was expecting a lot, and was utterly unsurprised to find myself going through the motions of completing a bunch of dailies, all with the predictable flavor of “kill X of this” or “collecting X of that”. I am, however, expecting things to get more exciting as they ramp up, and at least we get something related to the Plane of Water this time, a nice change that beats all the fire and earth rifts I’d been grinding and farming.